morning mood, c

“What?” Rosalie’s head whipped to the side at the sound of a man’s voice. He was set off by the amiable smile and exuberant regality that he seemed to radiate. It went to the point where Rosalie became wary of the man, whose intentions in helping him were unknown. He was handsome, but he didn't like his smile.

“No!” Rosalie gritted his teeth together, turning back to his runaway sunhat. “I can get it myself! Go away!” He was running alongside the man now. To accentuate his point, he tried to ram himself into the man, to shove him away, because he didn’t want the man’s tepid kindness, which he interpreted as pity. Rosalie probably looked helpless to the man. He was not helpless.

Recoiling from the shove, Rosalie stumbled a bit to the side. He struggled to regain his balance, but in his gaudy dresses, the effort was futile, and the world shot up from under him. He skid across the road, tumbled over and landed on his back, breathing hard.

Oh my God.

He picked himself up, extracting himself from the ground with great care. He was sweating, and as he watched as the distance between him and the man increase, the adrenaline was washed away from his system, replaced with stinging pain.

Wincing, he glanced at his arm. Blood was already beginning to flow. It wasn’t anything to be upset about, but it wasn’t the scrape that induced his horror.

His dress. It was ruined.

Torn in places that he would never imagine, he swept a trembling hand over the dirt that was smeared over the silk and white lace, like horrible graffiti emblazoned across the walls of a palace. He clutched at a loose strand of his dress, pulling at it in anger. It only ripped a horrible cut down the side of his dress.

Fury seared through his veins, and he looked up with fire alight in his eyes. He started to run after the man who caused all of it (even though it was initially his fault), but after a wave of pain told him that it wasn’t the best idea, he resorted to screaming at his back. He was still going after the sunhat. 

“Hey! You! Just look at what you’ve done! HEY!” He screeched like a banshee. Face flushed, he wiped a strand of artificial hair from his face. Who did he think he was, acting like a prince? He was going to give him a piece of his mind. Furious and feral, he waited for the man to come back with his arms folded across his chest.

Rosalie’s anger was replaced by pure bewilderment in a blink of an eye, with his jaw hanging slack and his eyes widened in disbelief. Was he supposed to believe that the man had noticed nothing at all?

Collecting himself, he snorted. “Wow. Thanks. Really appreciate it,” he said, shifting his weight from one leg to another, his hands still folded across his chest. Then, simmering, he stomped over and snatched the sunhat, pulling it back over his head.

The man’s innocent tone grated on Rosalie’s nerves. When the man suggested that he go with him to his house, he jerked his head upward, nostrils flared.

“Aren’t you shameless?” In a quieter voice, he added, “Asking a lady to accompany you to your house. Don’t you have ulterior motives?” But even as he said it, he didn’t believe it, unless the man was a skilled actor. Just in case, he shadowed the man three fine paces behind him.

He hated to admit it, but the thought that the man had ulterior motives terrified him. His arms trembled, and his gait was wobbly. But his neck remained outstretched and his head held high. He needed clothes . . . even if they were men’s clothes. The bus was probably already long gone, but he wasn’t going to walk around dressed in attire that had been reduced to rags.

MILES VELLA

He was a pure, genuine bundle of rainbows and little kittens, shining so bright that Rosalie felt blinded by his white radiance. He muttered something incomprehensible under his breath and, holding his arms, followed the strange man into his house after glancing at his tattered clothes.

Rosalie eyed the interior of the house—no, mansion—with muted interest. A crystal chandelier hung above their heads, looking menacing in the fact that the golden chain holding it looked a little thin. He noticed that his steps reverberated throughout the wide space. The line of his lips pressed together and twisted when he found that he had his own butler. Just who was this man?

He caught the butler’s eye. Suddenly aware of his current appearance, he hung his head, but the man only bowed low.

The man, assuming the nonchalance proper to a prince, strolled through the mansion and ushered Rosalie into his room. Rosalie entered, cautious.

The young man thought aloud, his eyes honest and thoughtful. And, despite the innocence and goodwill that leaked from his pores, Rosalie was still suspicious and wary of his motives. But, for now, he stayed put, in desperate need for clean clothes.

“Just grab anything,” he said suddenly. Surprised at his outburst, he allowed an awkward (at least, to him) silence to fill in the gaps of conversation. After a thought, he added, “But, I mean, at least have it . . . presentable.” He squirmed in his ripped blouse, ignoring the sting of his bleeding arm.

MILES VELLA

The prince pulled out a pair of loose grey sweatpants, a plain T-shirt and a beige cardigan. He splayed them on the bed for Rosalie to take a closer look.

Rosalie made a face, wrinkling his nose at the choice of apparel. The cardigan was okay, but the sweats? Rosalie huffed at the mental image of him walking down the sidewalk in a pair of crummy, puffed-up pantaloons, shaking his head as his expression transitioned into a slight grimace.

Still, he didn’t lack enough manners as to not thank the man, and as he raised his head to do so, the prince grabbed his arm with such intent that Rosalie jumped.

A scream was building, bubbling inside his chest, and it was about to erupt when he realized that it was the injury on his arm that he was so interested in. He could’ve handled it with more gently, but Rosalie allowed him to inspect the scrapes and bruises while he looked over at the outfit on the bed once more. He considered asked for another one, but wouldn’t that be pushing it? Under normal circumstances, he would’ve made his demands quite clear, but the prince was making him uncomfortable.

“Um, actually—” he started, having gathered the audacity to ask for an apparel swap, but, with horror, he found that the man wasn’t interested in his injury so much as he was at his body shape. As he stood still watching the man tug at the hem of his blouse, he imagined his heart leaping right out of his mouth.

He let out a shrill scream of horror. Slapping the man’s hand away, he backed away from him until he fell onto the bed, so fluffy that he could drown in his sheets. “S-Stay away from me!”

He hugged his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them; his eyes were wide, like a girl. A trembling, frightened little girl.

MILES VELLA

The horror overwhelmed him, spreading throughout the confines of his body. He could feel the blackness crawling up his spine, followed by a terrible chill. Of course, he’d received strange looks, but there was nobody who had the nerve to walk over and feel him in such a barbaric way. It wasn’t supposed to be this bad, but something about the man had made being discovered so terrifying that he was blinking back angry tears.

The prince seemed to loom over him, his eyes still so wide and innocent that it made Rosalie furious. With pure curiosity, he voiced his conclusions, asked his questions that seemed so obvious to Rosalie that he couldn’t even begin to fit them into coherent sentences.

“Step back.” Rosalie tried to force authority into his squeaky voice, but he knew it was futile. “Just. Back. Up.”

Fearful eyes flickered toward the open door, hanging loose, the warm invitation of escape enticing Rosalie’s thoughts. He got up into a slow crouch, still unsteady on the bed, and wondered how he was going to leap past the man and out of the mansion. Would he be able to navigate the house? Could he scream for help?

In the ripped, tattered top and skirt smeared with gravel and dirt, he wished his disposition were as ferine as his appearance and crawled off of the bed, on the opposite side, away from the prince. He wanted as much distance between them as possible.

“Why I’m scared?” He hissed at the man, the sound beginning to transition into a snarl but cut short into an abrupt, ragged cadence. He glared at the man through slits. “I’m in some creepy man’s mansion, and the man in question was on the verge of molesting me. I knew you had ulterior motives.” If looks could kill, the prince would be sprawled on the floor, an empty husk of flesh, blood and bones.

And he noticed that he tried very hard to avoid the subject of his gender.

MILES VELLA

“No.” The rasp of desperation came out in a hoarse whisper, his hand reaching out toward the door to his salvation. With a quiet click, Rosalie was trapped. He could feel it—the cold darkness taking over his senses and the chill crawling up and down his spine.

He backed up against the wall, pressing his body against the coolness of the drywall and digging his heels into the softness of the carpet. The reality of the situation had begun to sink in, as well as the fear that had been an archived thought at the back of his mind. Miles' words flew right over his head.

His eyes were squeezed shut, and his lips pressed together. He was repeating the same words over and over again in his mind.

Somebody help me, somebody help me, somebody help me . . .

A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. What was he going to do to him? Was he really planning on doing things to him? But now that he knew he was a boy, what was going on through his mind? Shaking his head, Rosalie gasped. He didn’t want to know what was going on in the prince’s mind, for fear that a glimpse of it would drive him insane.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he said. His eyelids fluttered, like the translucent wings of a firefly, before the whole world went dark and the crimson carpet came up to meet him.

MILES VELLA